Creativity in UX/UI Design

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What is Creativity in UX/UI Design?

Creativity is a process designers use to drive their abilities towards making artistic innovations (regarding aesthetics) and technical ones (about tackling design problems). Vital in ideation, creativity involves diversity and structure, splits into stages and types, is learnable and has a variety of methods to try.

See what creativity involves as a vital ingredient in design.  

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    What is creativity? Is it something that you just sort of *wait for* to fall on you from above? Or is it something you *work at*? Do you all have those moments when you  you know you need a spark of creativity? You're in the midst of designing something; you're trying to make a new website; you're trying to make a new application; you're trying to work out how to evaluate something

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:01:02

    that's hard to evaluate – perhaps  the way people feel or something like this. And you want that *moment of inspiration*, and does it come when you need it? Of course it doesn't! The model we have of creativity tends to be about these moments of genius. And you already heard about, I think, the 3M story, the Post-it Notes. You know – imagine if you'd had that idea to use this sort of magic glue on the back to create Post-it Notes; how much money there has been on Post-it Notes. Or Philippe Starck and the – well, we all know the lemon juicer is not perhaps all it's cooked up to be,

  3. 00:01:02 --> 00:01:30

    that it dribbles all over your fingers and stuff, but boy is it iconic! And everybody who's anybody in design would like one of those lemon squeezers sitting on their kitchen worktop! We have this idea of creativity as a genius activity. It might be Steve Jobs in Apple or some of these designers we're looking at here, perhaps Einstein. But is that the full story? Certainly that's the sort of way it seems if you look at sort of

  4. 00:01:30 --> 00:02:01

    Western traditions of thinking about these things. Going way back to the Greeks, you've got the Muses, the different arts, and the idea that somehow or other this inspiration comes from the Muses up in Olympus and gives you these bright ideas, whether it's poetry or whether it's music ... or web design! So, is that the real story? Let's look a little bit back at these two we've been looking at. First of all, let's look back at the Post-it Notes.

  5. 00:02:01 --> 00:02:34

    The story is a little bit more complicated; it's not just – you probably know a little bit about this; it wasn't just a moment of inspiration. The guy who was trying to design these things – well, he *wasn't* trying to design these things; the guy was called Spencer Silver; 1968, and he's trying to design a really good glue. And he makes his glue, and he puts it on the back of some paper, and he sticks it to something, and it just... pulls straight off again. Whatever he sticks it to, it's rubbish.

  6. 00:02:34 --> 00:03:06

    Now, I don't know if you've done  this. You've been scribbling away at something; you've got lots  of ideas, perhaps on your napkin... and you're about to throw it away. When you're about to do that, when you're about to throw it in the bin, pull it out again, have another peek because you never know when you might have a *moment of genius*. Spencer Silver was like this, but he knew  there was something about this.

  7. 00:03:06 --> 00:03:31

    There was something about this he felt could be useful. He spent five years going around 3M talking to people, giving seminars and talks and  talking about this solution in need of a problem. And then, in 1974, a guy called Arthur Fry was in one of these talks and came back to Spencer and said, 'I have an idea.'

  8. 00:03:31 --> 00:04:01

    Five years, two people, and an idea that could have been.... And that would throw the whole lot away  in the bin before it ever started. Okay, let's look at the lemon squeezer  now. So, Philippe Starck – I think it was in Italy, but he's in a restaurant somewhere. And the story is he's thinking about lemon squeezers; he has this sort of inspiration of a squid,

  9. 00:04:01 --> 00:04:33

    and hence we get the iconic lemon squeezer. But of course, first of all that's not built just  on that meal time. He knows about lemon squeezers; he's seen lots of lemon squeezers, lemon squeezers which have some of the suggestions – especially if you look at those kind that you do this to – of the one  on the bottom, or be it the other way around; maybe it would work better if you have the sharp end up. But even that – it's not as simple as that. He wrote down on, perhaps it was a  tablecloth – certainly in some of these Italian restaurants you get paper tablecloths

  10. 00:04:33 --> 00:05:02

    that get taken away, thrown away at the end. But this tablecloth has been preserved, or this napkin has been preserved. And when you look at that, you see things, images, some of them which look pretty much like standard lemon squeezers, and gradually shifting. The order is not so clear. But it looks pretty much like actually the squid came quite late in the day. So, when he tells the story, of course the squid is hot in his imagination, but when you  actually look at the trace of the design,

  11. 00:05:02 --> 00:05:30

    there were a lot of stages, goodness knows how many sketches, on this very small piece of paper that eventually came up with this idea. So, even something that took quite a short amount of time, unlike the 3M Post-it Notes, which took five years to gestate, this happened quite quickly. But even, so there was quite an *evolutionary  process* in actually coming up with the idea. So, the question is – can we have *techniques* to help us do this kind of thing?

  12. 00:05:30 --> 00:05:39

    Not necessarily to turn us into immediate magic geniuses, but to actually get reasonable creative ideas when we need them.

 

Table of contents

There’s More than Meets the Eye to Creativity

Generally, Creativity is often mislabeled as a phenomenon rather than a process, and classic misconceptions about it include:

  • Only imaginative individuals can produce good, unique and useful ideas.

  • The artistic, right-side brain governs creativity.

In user experience (UX) design, creativity is closely linked with innovation and—rather than be a natural-born talent—it involves a set of techniques and approaches anyone can learn. Because users’ problems are typically complex and intricately linked to the many contexts they find themselves in, the ideas designers strive for to solve these rarely “just happen”. Indeed, there’s a formula for creativity:

Creativity = Diversity + Structure

So, you can train your mind to be more creatively productive, leveraging techniques that expand in scale from simple methods up to the creativity-nurturing routine and environment you choose. Creative mindsets can seem anarchic and unruly, but there’s always a method to the madness involved somewhere (along with stages of creativity to grasp). Particularly, it’s important to learn how to tap into divergent thinking—to explore the horizon, including the wild, weird and downright wacky ideas—and then fine-tune your view of what might actually work using convergent thinkingOverall, creative ideas must be novel (i.e., involving a level of novelty that goes beyond anything you knew before making discoveries) and useful (i.e., truly practical for you to develop and ultimately beneficial to your users).

© Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Types of Creativity

Discover how various types of creativity apply to design.

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:30

    What is creativity? Is it something that you just sort of *wait for* to fall on you from above? Or is it something you *work at*? Do you all have those moments when you  you know you need a spark of creativity? You're in the midst of designing something; you're trying to make a new website; you're trying to make a new application; you're trying to work out how to evaluate something

  2. 00:00:30 --> 00:01:02

    that's hard to evaluate – perhaps  the way people feel or something like this. And you want that *moment of inspiration*, and does it come when you need it? Of course it doesn't! The model we have of creativity tends to be about these moments of genius. And you already heard about, I think, the 3M story, the Post-it Notes. You know – imagine if you'd had that idea to use this sort of magic glue on the back to create Post-it Notes; how much money there has been on Post-it Notes. Or Philippe Starck and the – well, we all know the lemon juicer is not perhaps all it's cooked up to be,

  3. 00:01:02 --> 00:01:30

    that it dribbles all over your fingers and stuff, but boy is it iconic! And everybody who's anybody in design would like one of those lemon squeezers sitting on their kitchen worktop! We have this idea of creativity as a genius activity. It might be Steve Jobs in Apple or some of these designers we're looking at here, perhaps Einstein. But is that the full story? Certainly that's the sort of way it seems if you look at sort of

  4. 00:01:30 --> 00:02:01

    Western traditions of thinking about these things. Going way back to the Greeks, you've got the Muses, the different arts, and the idea that somehow or other this inspiration comes from the Muses up in Olympus and gives you these bright ideas, whether it's poetry or whether it's music ... or web design! So, is that the real story? Let's look a little bit back at these two we've been looking at. First of all, let's look back at the Post-it Notes.

  5. 00:02:01 --> 00:02:34

    The story is a little bit more complicated; it's not just – you probably know a little bit about this; it wasn't just a moment of inspiration. The guy who was trying to design these things – well, he *wasn't* trying to design these things; the guy was called Spencer Silver; 1968, and he's trying to design a really good glue. And he makes his glue, and he puts it on the back of some paper, and he sticks it to something, and it just... pulls straight off again. Whatever he sticks it to, it's rubbish.

  6. 00:02:34 --> 00:03:06

    Now, I don't know if you've done  this. You've been scribbling away at something; you've got lots  of ideas, perhaps on your napkin... and you're about to throw it away. When you're about to do that, when you're about to throw it in the bin, pull it out again, have another peek because you never know when you might have a *moment of genius*. Spencer Silver was like this, but he knew  there was something about this.

  7. 00:03:06 --> 00:03:31

    There was something about this he felt could be useful. He spent five years going around 3M talking to people, giving seminars and talks and  talking about this solution in need of a problem. And then, in 1974, a guy called Arthur Fry was in one of these talks and came back to Spencer and said, 'I have an idea.'

  8. 00:03:31 --> 00:04:01

    Five years, two people, and an idea that could have been.... And that would throw the whole lot away  in the bin before it ever started. Okay, let's look at the lemon squeezer  now. So, Philippe Starck – I think it was in Italy, but he's in a restaurant somewhere. And the story is he's thinking about lemon squeezers; he has this sort of inspiration of a squid,

  9. 00:04:01 --> 00:04:33

    and hence we get the iconic lemon squeezer. But of course, first of all that's not built just  on that meal time. He knows about lemon squeezers; he's seen lots of lemon squeezers, lemon squeezers which have some of the suggestions – especially if you look at those kind that you do this to – of the one  on the bottom, or be it the other way around; maybe it would work better if you have the sharp end up. But even that – it's not as simple as that. He wrote down on, perhaps it was a  tablecloth – certainly in some of these Italian restaurants you get paper tablecloths

  10. 00:04:33 --> 00:05:02

    that get taken away, thrown away at the end. But this tablecloth has been preserved, or this napkin has been preserved. And when you look at that, you see things, images, some of them which look pretty much like standard lemon squeezers, and gradually shifting. The order is not so clear. But it looks pretty much like actually the squid came quite late in the day. So, when he tells the story, of course the squid is hot in his imagination, but when you  actually look at the trace of the design,

  11. 00:05:02 --> 00:05:30

    there were a lot of stages, goodness knows how many sketches, on this very small piece of paper that eventually came up with this idea. So, even something that took quite a short amount of time, unlike the 3M Post-it Notes, which took five years to gestate, this happened quite quickly. But even, so there was quite an *evolutionary  process* in actually coming up with the idea. So, the question is – can we have *techniques* to help us do this kind of thing?

  12. 00:05:30 --> 00:05:39

    Not necessarily to turn us into immediate magic geniuses, but to actually get reasonable creative ideas when we need them.

 

Creativity divides into two chief spheres that share certain areas:

Artistic creativity

Technical creativity

You would use this to (e.g.) design an attractive logo.

You would use this to (e.g.) solve a problem or put together a strategy as you explore (and push at the edges of) the design space.

Renowned cognitive scientist Margaret Boden has classified two additional types of creativity:  

H-creativity: historic creativity

P-creativity: personal creativity

New for humanity, such as first-in-the-world discoveries (e.g., the smartphone). 

Something that’s new for the person who makes the discovery. P-creativity is what you use when addressing a specific problem. Whether or not your idea becomes a “world first” is another matter, but H- and P-creativity do share common ground when designers make personal discoveries that later become historically important advances.

From a process aspect, we can add a further pair of types of creativity, as defined by Alan Dix:

Ant-like creativity

Flea-like creativity 

You take small and many iterative steps that collectively lead to a novel and useful design. Working carefully, you’ll typically have a solution in sight from early on and leverage convergent thinking to evolve your idea incrementally in a number of versions towards it.

You think wide and wild and jump at an idea that seems revolutionary. It’s the bold type of creativity—and hence often means you’ll go down the wrong avenues searching for optimal solutions—but risks can pay off and unlock doors to reveal radically brilliant insights and solutions.

© Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Tips for Getting Creative

To set out on a fresh pathway and journey towards truly unique and innovative ideas, you have a variety of options to explore (including learning how to overcome bias). It’s perfectly human to experience creative blocks, however, so here are some important things to consider:

  1. Quantity breeds quality – “More is more” in terms of idea generation. Brainstorming, for example, frees you to thoroughly investigate every possible dimension where a great solution might exist, no matter how silly things may first appear.

  2. Look within – Get in touch with your inner self by listing pain points, etc.; which pain points could you solve and how?

  3. Look without – Make detailed observations of what’s going on around you (e.g., your office) and describe or sketch others and what they’re doing.

  4. Break your habits/routine – Change something about your day-to-day life and examine any differences that arise from it. This can encourage the creative juices to flow.

  5. Stop thinking – Just shut off and see if a distraction (e.g., a long walk) breaks the block.

  6. Smother bad ideas – In the pursuit of sheer quantity over quality, sometimes you can bury yourself under an avalanche of thought relating to even just one bad idea. Try getting tough with it to see if it’s actually worth the effort. Maybe it is of questionable value. However, perhaps you can find good aspects or “secret staircases” within it that can take you up or down a level to reveal fresh insights.

Overall, allow yourself to fail – as creativity is an iterative (and enjoyably rewarding) learning process. Sooner or later, you’ll find yourself getting better at exploring your design space, finding intriguing hidden aspects of a problem, learning from mistakes along the way and, ultimately, tightening your grasp as you get a handle on what users really want from a product or service.

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."

— Albert Einstein

Learn More about Creativity

Take our Creativity course.

Show Hide video transcript
  1. 00:00:00 --> 00:00:39

    Do you all have those moments when you  know you need a spark of creativity? You know... "I want my wonderful bright idea!" — — Nothing comes. I'm not going to try and give you a creativity machine; so, what I'm going to try to do is give  you *techniques* and *mechanisms*. I hope that wasn't too shocking for you,  seeing me waking up in the morning!

  2. 00:00:39 --> 00:01:01

    You notice what I'm trying to do here is to make the *maximum* use of the *fluid* creative thinking and yet also then translate that and make  it into something that's more structured. And this is true whether it's  producing a piece of writing, producing a presentation or video or  producing some software.

  3. 00:01:01 --> 00:01:03

    Get on and *do* it!

 

This Smashing Magazine piece insightfully explores another side to creativity.

See how designers leverage creativity in this example-rich article.

Here are some helpful tips.

Answer a Short Quiz to Earn a Gift

Question 1

What best describes creativity in design?

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Literature on Creativity in UX/UI Design

Here’s the entire UX literature on Creativity in UX/UI Design by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Creativity in UX/UI Design

Take a deep dive into Creativity with our course Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services .

The overall goal of this course is to help you design better products, services and experiences by helping you and your team develop innovative and useful solutions. You’ll learn a human-focused, creative design process.

We’re going to show you what creativity is as well as a wealth of ideation methods―both for generating new ideas and for developing your ideas further. You’ll learn skills and step-by-step methods you can use throughout the entire creative process. We’ll supply you with lots of templates and guides so by the end of the course you’ll have lots of hands-on methods you can use for your and your team’s ideation sessions. You’re also going to learn how to plan and time-manage a creative process effectively.

Most of us need to be creative in our work regardless of if we design user interfaces, write content for a website, work out appropriate workflows for an organization or program new algorithms for system backend. However, we all get those times when the creative step, which we so desperately need, simply does not come. That can seem scary—but trust us when we say that anyone can learn how to be creative­ on demand. This course will teach you ways to break the impasse of the empty page. We'll teach you methods which will help you find novel and useful solutions to a particular problem, be it in interaction design, graphics, code or something completely different. It’s not a magic creativity machine, but when you learn to put yourself in this creative mental state, new and exciting things will happen.

In the “Build Your Portfolio: Ideation Project”, you’ll find a series of practical exercises which together form a complete ideation project so you can get your hands dirty right away. If you want to complete these optional exercises, you will get hands-on experience with the methods you learn and in the process you’ll create a case study for your portfolio which you can show your future employer or freelance customers.

Your instructor is Alan Dix. He’s a creativity expert, professor and co-author of the most popular and impactful textbook in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Alan has worked with creativity for the last 30+ years, and he’ll teach you his favorite techniques as well as show you how to make room for creativity in your everyday work and life.

You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you’ve completed the course. You can highlight it on your resume, your LinkedIn profile or your website.

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